Forum:Fed up!
We've had another complaint about ads We've had another complaint about ads. I'm extremely embarrassed by this. When someone posts a link to the wiki, I should feel confident that the site they see will a) look pleasant and b) not try to hijack their browser. I am sick of the ad situation. I'm tired of trying to convince Wikia that bad ad partners are worse than none at all, or convincing them that we need other options. Agatha should not be used to sell ad space over which we have no control. I'm also annoyed with what these ads do to the layout on the front page or on pages like this. We need to find a better solution, especially since most visitors to this wiki are not logged in and will see all of the ads we normally don't. Until Wikia changes its policies or the wiki is moved, I'm going into administrative limbo. I'll help resolve issues and maintain things as they are, but I won't be updating articles, taking part in dicussions, or putting further work into this version of the wiki. If the subject of ads matters to you at all, please speak up. Please, please, please post here, the livejournal groups, and the Yahoo group. Regretfully, — m (talk) 23:47, 23 July 2009 (UTC) :Ha. Opening one of the pages (probably Klaus's) I got a voice ad on my speakers. Startled the hell out of me. There was probably a pop-up connected with it but my FireFox browser has outfoxed pop-ups. :The ads are a detraction from the pages. Especially animated ads on otherwise sedate pages. They re-purpose the whole show. :I like the wikia format. The underlying wiki code is open source and I have thought about recommending it in a different context. Here of course we would sort of need a host. No one would need to be relied upon to maintain a wiki site as part of fan duties. :Sometimes you just have to be repetitious and persistent to get what you need. We should bug the wikia folks massively and regularly until they either listen or throw us off. :Oggie: Hey anybody vant to be my friend? :(pause...) :Oggie: Alroigt, then hyu fight! :--Rej ¤¤? 00:38, 24 July 2009 (UTC) ::You got a voice ad? Geez. *facepalms* — m (talk) 01:05, 24 July 2009 (UTC) : I will miss you, I hope this is temporary. : I'm not happy about the ads, but I'm not overly annoyed by them (and I realize that Wikia needs to cover expenses). If the wiki is moved, it needs to be automatic — hand-composing all the pages again won't happen. We also don't want to split the active contributors into two groups by some moving and some staying. Argadi 09:08, 24 July 2009 (UTC) :: No, no splitting the wiki. I won't support a move like that. The only viable hosting options at this point must run on MediaWiki. For one, I'm fond of it and I think it's the best option. But we also don't want to have to redo templates and everything else. :: If we don't move, and Wikia doesn't change, I'm not sure what I'll do. Every time I post a link to the wiki on one of the fan groups, someone inevitably remarks on the ads and I end up having to apologize. I'm tired of being put through that. ::— m (talk) 17:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC) ::: With m''' and corgi looking to move I can see that this is happening and quite swiftly. Will the wikia people be amenable to letting us leave? My understanding is that this site, these pages, will remain up and the ads on these pages will remain intrusive. Even if most of the crowd here moves the confusion will remain. This seems to me one of those plans where you lose your hat. ::: We need one of those plans where we don't kill nobody. --Rej ¤¤? 00:10, 26 July 2009 (UTC) :::: Hey there. I was just about to post about this. I have been looking into things and I may have found us something. I've emailed Zarchne and hope to hear from him soon. I'd also like other active editors to sound off on this before any steps are taken (especially before any money is spent). If everyone isn't in agreement on this, we can't do it. :::: If there is a transition, I want to do everything to ensure that it's slow, orderly, and done with care. As for what happens with this wiki, once all articles were ported over, we'd have to delete all but the main page and leave a link to the new one. :::: ''— m'' (talk) 01:32, 26 July 2009 (UTC) ::::: Be sure you follow the letter and spirit of Wikia:Licensing and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported for any use of the contents outside of Wikia.com and for what you leave behind. Argadi 04:11, 26 July 2009 (UTC) :::::: If the rest of the editors agree to move, will you be staying? ''— m'' (talk) 05:12, 26 July 2009 (UTC) ::::::: That would be a waste. Argadi 12:36, 26 July 2009 (UTC) ::::: Argadi's comment ::::: Argadi's comment ::::: headtilts ::::: Um... what do you mean, the 'letter and spirit'? As opposed to what? -- Corgi 06:19, 26 July 2009 (UTC) :::::: Well, primarily considering the license as opposed to ignoring it. But secondarily, making sure we pay attention to the details of the license. For example, would a move be changing the location of an existing work, or creating a new work based on the existing work (according to copyright law and the license, not according to our intent)? What are the implications of the answer to that question on what citation of the old site we need on he new site, and how we need to leave the content on the current site? :::::: Adding later: The CC license is over three thousand words. I've skimmed it, but I have not read it carefully, let alone understood it. I'm comfortable editing with my current level of understanding, I'm not comfortable that I know how to move the wiki. Does anyone know of any large, active wikis that have moved off wikia.com? We could ask for lessons learned from previous moves. :::::: We also need to consider what happens to signed comments made by people who aren't active editors. If we create new accounts on the new wiki with those names, how can we verify only the original authors can use those accounts? Argadi 12:36, 26 July 2009 (UTC) ::::::: I'd have to reread things more carefully to give my answer to your first point, but as to moving - lots of copy/paste/delete. As to the signed comments, we wouldn't (couldn't) create accounts for anybody other than our individual selves. I'd be inclined, OCD as I am, to work through slowly and recreate the signatures as outside links, as their account data will remain on Wikia until they remove it. ::::::: However, we don't owe Wikia anything other than what is contracted. They have no claims on our material that aren't superceded by the Foglios. -- Corgi 16:30, 26 July 2009 (UTC) :::::::: Ah, I think I understand Argadi's question now. No, we're not beholden to Wikia at all. The concern is attribution to other editors. However, as I read it (present tense), I don't forsee any legal problems moving the wiki. IANAL, but: ::::::::* The license specifically allows for copying under any circumstances, so long as attribution to the original work is provided. Note that that attribution can, and frequently does, include the additions from multiple authors. ::::::::* Just as Wikia does not express any control over - or care - what we as a community choose to include or remove from individual articles, they do not choose which articles we keep or delete. If there is consensus (and in this case I would only accept a consensus of ALL), we can delete 10 pages, 100 pages, or all 500+. ::::::::* Plenty of notice would be given before any drastic changes were made, giving plenty of time for authors to object. If anyone objected to their work being ported (whether they had legal standing or not) I think we'd be fine respecting that. I can imagine this place being up for months after the new wiki is up while we make sure we we're safe, stable, and presentable in our new home. ::::::::* Talk pages, forums, and any other place where work does have individual attributions are an issue we'd have to discuss in more depth (later! and in its own forum topic). More than likely, I think we would ''not'' be porting over much of that content. Forums are the hairiest issue, since we would want to find a way to preserve a lot of that content. :::::::: But we can take it slow while we work all of this out, since I still need to hear from other editors. :::::::: ''— m'' (talk) 17:54, 26 July 2009 (UTC) ::::::::: Why not copy everything, and fix the author links? Laborious, sure, but the names will be searchable and if even just one would come up with the correct link at first, it would be pointing in the right direction. It's not changing how public it is, just where it's stored. As to talk pages, yeah - only the current issues, as a lot of those are past-tense discussions. -- Corgi 18:07, 26 July 2009 (UTC) :::::::::: Yeah, there's always that. I'd hate to leave links back here, though. Maybe an archive of old discussions? ''— m'' (talk) 21:38, 26 July 2009 (UTC) ::::::::::: I'd favor archiving the old discussions and converting links to plain text, if practical. I'd also favor deleting the pages here after the move, and leaving a placeholder link to the new wiki. Costs will still need to be covered, which probably means some sort of ads. Is the assumption that a different setup would allow better ads to be chosen? Maybe text ads instead of flash/banner ads? I have to admit, I currently have the latter blocked, but I don't mind the former. Nekokami 13:52, 27 July 2009 (UTC) Sort of off the subject -- if anyone wants to monkey with the mediawiki and phpBB installs on this other temp freebie host, feel free. Drop me an email if you need info/access. ''— m'' (talk) 00:19, 27 July 2009 (UTC) Who has read and understood the license? Has anyone read and understood the license used by this wiki? If so, I have a question for you: Above Corgi suggests "but as to moving - lots of copy/paste/delete". If we take that approach, copying the text but not taking the edit history, we would not be crediting the author of each edit. In that case would we be in compliance with section 4 © of the license? Argadi 01:54, 27 July 2009 (UTC) :Before I answer any further, I would like to be clear about something: Are you a paid employee of Wikia or do you have any kind of financial interest in Wikia, Inc.? ''— m'' (talk) 02:46, 27 July 2009 (UTC) :: No, I have no official or unoffical connection to Wikia other than as a contributor to this wiki. Argadi 10:13, 27 July 2009 (UTC) : True, and I can see a practical value for moving the history - but crediting authors for edits which may have been wholly supplanted, or adding a comma or replacing a typo is not that. I give you this discussion of the licensing and its impracticality as it is being applied. I'm not saying we should go ahead and violate it (or blatantly or flippantly), but there's also an issue of scale and resources. :: Two points in response to this: ::* Yes, there's no need to credit authors of work that has been supplanted. However, it is appropriate to credit in cases where it has not been supplanted, and I expect it would be easier to move all the history than review each edit to determine if it still remains in the current work. ::* I agree that the license isn't what I would want. But it is the license we agreed to. Argadi 10:13, 27 July 2009 (UTC) : Let me flip this over - you're very concerned about this, over and above (it seems to me) ensuring your hard work gets proper credit (enlightened self-interest). Why so? What's going on here, what is your sticking point? I'm quite curious now, I would like to read an expansion of your thoughts if you'd oblige me please. -- Corgi 02:49, 27 July 2009 (UTC) :: I am a long time supporter of the free software movement. An important pillar of the movement is license agreements that preserve the rights of developers to take previously developed code and use it (with restrictions). The ability to use is important, but so are the restrictions (with different groups having different views on what the restrictions should be). The basis for the legal enforcement of these rights (by requiring that source code be made available) and restrictions is the copyright code. Therefore I support following agreements and enforcing copyright regulations. :: I also support copyright enforcement (and intellectual property rights enforcement in general) to support authors I enjoy who depend on copyright laws to ensure their income, and because my own person income has depended to some extent on copyright laws. (The effect on my personal income is listed last because it is mostly theoretical. For much of what I have produced there is no one who would benefit financially by stealing it.) :: There is also the possibility that we may need to formally defend any move from wikia.com. Assuming that Wikia makes a profit on this wiki from the ads, we are talking about taking income from Wikia. If we don't do it properly they might decide to send a lawyer after us (to discourage others from taking similar action). I don't really expect that, but it depends on how much income they are making and how sloppy we are with copyright issues. Argadi 10:13, 27 July 2009 (UTC) ::: Okay, your position is making much more sense to me now. Thank you for going into a deeper explanation. (And thank you, Corgi, for asking in such a nice way.) I understand now where you're coming from. And for the record, I wholeheartedly share your views. ::: Here's my position for the time being: Yes, there will be legal questions involved in moving the wiki, but I object to framing this as a hurdle to be overcome, as opposed to just another technical issue we'll need to deal with when the time comes. If we need to port over the raw files with complete histories, fine, I'll figure out how to do that. But as one of the links above points out, even those complete exported files could be technical violations, making the point of using them a bit moot. ::: Rather than waste a lot of energy worrying about the letter of the law -- on which I am not qualified to make a judgement and would probably best be handled by a team of lawyers from the EFF -- I think we'll be fine handling this in the spirit of the law, which is that everyone who contributes gets credit for what they've done. I would especially like to note at this point that Wikia has not contributed any content, only individuals. ::: The thing is, none of us are actually in disagreement on who has what rights. It's a purely technical discussion about how we move files at this point. I think I safely speak for everyone when I say that, as the Girl Genius Wiki, our primary obligation is to protect the moral and financial interests of Studio Foglio and everyone who's worked for them. Our secondary obligation is to protect the attribution rights of contributors to this wiki. Furthermore, we as a community generally agree that article contributors have the right to request that we not use their work, a right that the licensing agreement does not give them. ::: I'm far more concerned with the state of images. I, for one, would prefer to cut down on the number of images we use and provide links to the comic in lieu of hosting things ourselves. I'm willing to listen to other people on this. ::: Right now, I'm more concerned about getting certain people to answer their email so we can start the ball rolling... ''— m'' (talk) 18:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC) Transformers wiki While searching on this topic, I found wikipedia:Wikia#Advertising_and_use_of_free_content a mention on Wikipedia, which led me to an article on this issue in the Guardian. The article (from July 2008) mentions the transformers wiki on wikia.com was leaving for a new site. Both sites are still operating (and from a quick look both seem to have many more edits than our wiki), but the site on Wikia is still first in the Google search for "transformer wiki". Does anyone have any more information on the health of those two wikis? Argadi 10:38, 27 July 2009 (UTC) Another thought: The people who organized the new transformer wiki could be a useful resource. Ask them what worked, what didn't work, and how they think a split should be organized. Argadi 14:16, 27 July 2009 (UTC) : Already on it. It looks like they actually did have a "split" and some editors ended up staying behind and the entire wiki was left behind, so people keep editing that wiki out of ignorance. TFWiki appears to be the bigger, healthier one. ''— m'' (talk) 18:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC) Taming Wikia I.E The plan where we don't kill nobody. The problem IMO is that wikia is placing inappropriate advertising on our most visited web pages. My guess is that they are selling massive exposure to large advertisers crossing over all of the wiki farms. So we, small drop in the bucket that we are, are not the only ones nonplussed. Politics is best done by the polis (or the Baron). When the same message comes to wikia's ears from '''many sources they will pay attention. What does wikia need from us? What do we need from our site host? Needs are not wants. Needs come from necessity. Wikia needs a certain amount of revenue to defray costs of both hosting and of development. They need to win from a for profit point of view. How can we help them do that while making sure our needs are met? If we can answer those questions and organize other wikia members to join in the campaign of removing inappropriate ads, we all may get to keep our hats. --Rej ¤¤? 20:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC) : Good point, but I myself don't have the time/energy to devote to singlemindedly herding cats in that manner - and I have a good idea that's exactly what it would be like. If you want to take a whack at it, I'll certainly support your campaign. : The short answers to your questions are: Wikia wants hits so their adverts make money. We want a place to put our stuff. -- Corgi 20:31, 27 July 2009 (UTC) :: Needs are not wants. Needs come from necessity. If all we needed was a place, well we've got one now. What makes this place not suit our needs? --Rej ¤¤? 04:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC) ::: Their need for advertising to provide support for the, ahem, freeloaders. So to speak. Our visitors are being discommodated by their financial support. -- Corgi 04:27, 30 July 2009 (UTC) :::: ???? Tanstafaal.Robert A. Heinlein: There Ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If you think about it our users are accomidated by wikia's hosting of our efforts. We are too. This is (intrusive ads, excepted) a comfortable home base. What I need is a way to pay attention to the content I came for. And not to be interrupted or intruded upon by animated and vocal advertising. Sedate ads I can put up with. And sedate ads that interest me in the context of my fandom are probably a plus. :::: Wikia's current problem is one of scale. They have a sales force focusing on big name advertisers. Getting heavy duty ads (animated, overlaying content, and pop up's with audio.) Since those ads are intrusively distracting they are objectionable. Also Wikia is placing them on the most visited pages, while leaving the lesser ones alone. That means our most current pages, The ones everybody visits remain untapped, because they are created new every M,W,F. OTOH, when a vote focuses attention on Klaus's page, the ads follow the traffic. :::: So basicly Wikia is serving neither their ad customers, nor us by their current policy. So for both of us a better world should be possible. ::: As for the time and energy question. The taming of wikia is something that will take a modest effort from a large number of folks. Each one doing their share to send the message from a different direction. I am not the one to organize that kind of thing either. Some others on this site, I suspect, are. So I am just pointing out the idea. ::: Also before rolling out a message, it needs to be formulated. That is the current phase. --Rej ¤¤? 17:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC) ::::: from sarcasm Corgi :Wikia is well aware that a large portion of their users dislike ads. I remember some very long forum topics at the central wikia, all trying to dissuade them from taking this route, but without success. The last time I spoke to someone by email, they did say, in a very thoughtful and non-canned response, that they were looking into user-paid options. I advise anyone with an interest in this issue to send feedback to (community) at the (wikia) domain name, which is a (com)mercial site and tell them that you are serious about wanting to pay them money directly instead of dealing with ads. — m (talk) 04:32, 1 August 2009 (UTC) :: If I had any way of backing up my word, I'd do just that. :( -- Corgi 05:33, 1 August 2009 (UTC) :: I don't know how many of the wikis on Wikia might have people serious about paying them money directly, but I do know that some on-line services do offer an option of a different level of service which is charged for. So if they offer such an option, some sites would take advantage of it, and others would not. If they're awaiting a level of feedback before implementing such an option, there may be difficulties in it. --Quadibloc 21:33, 22 August 2009 (UTC) ::: The official answer I got, from Angela Beesley herself, was that there was no plan to offer paid hosting. In a previous email (don't recall who, but not the same person), they had said that that was one option being floated around. The idea must have died off at some point. — m (talk) 19:15, 23 August 2009 (UTC) Ad monitoring, and interesting find Before logging in I tried clicking on the gg link from the current page-by-page discussion. I did not get transfered right away to the comic. First a screen came up with two centered ads. The ads were animated and after forced viewing I was eventually connected to the gg site. I tried this from an older page-by-page link. The same thing happened. I logged in and repeated both experiments. Transfered instantly. No intermediate screen. This is somewhat upsetting because I checked the box in skins indicating I am to be shown ads as non-logged in people see them. So it is not possible to monitor ads while logged in. At least not exactly as an unlogged in individual would see them. --Rej ¤¤? 02:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)